I have been working lately on comparing on comparing different technologies to build web API’s.. One of the main concerns was if we wanted to build a simple API service which technology would be easier, more productive to develop the service with. To provide a reference comparison I will build the same web service (in MuleSoft, Azure Logic App, Asp.Net Core, Spring Boot) and provide my notes as I go. The web service would provide the following functionality

1. CRUD operations on an Authors entity
2. CRUD operations on BOOKS entities where books are related to authors

All the Read (queries) should support:

1. Filtering
2. Searching
3. Paging
4. Supports Levels two and three in Richardson Maturity Model(see my previous post https://moustafarefaat.wordpress.com/2018/12/11/practical-rest-api-design-implementation-and-richardson-maturity-model/) . This means based on the Accept header of the request return the results as either:
   1. Pure JSON
   2. With HATEOUS

I will start with MuleSoft implementation.

Step 1. Define the API in RAML

With MuleSoft you get AnyPoint portal and you get the design center, which helps you designing the API RAML. There is API Designer visual Editor which can help you in the beginning.

Though it has many weakness such as:

1. Once when you switch to RAML editor you cannot go back.
2. You cannot define your own Media Types you have to use form the list.

To finalize the API definition in RAML I had to manually edit though the editor was helping to get started. Below is a fragment of the API in RAML (The full solution will be published on my GitHub https://github.com/RefaatM )

Notice in the RAML that I have defined two responses for the Get operation of the Authors Resources. Full RAML is at (https://github.com/RefaatM/MuleSoftRestAPIExample/tree/master/src/main/resources/api)

#%RAML 1.0

title: GTBooks

description: |

GTBooks Example

version: ‘1.0’

mediaType:

– application/json

– application/xml

protocols:

– HTTP

baseUri: /api/v1.0

types:

CreateAuthor:

description: This is a new DataType

type: object

properties:

Name:

required: true

example: Moustafa Refaat

description: Author Name

type: string

Nationality:

required: true

example: Canadian

description: ‘Author Nationality ‘

type: string

Date-of-Birth:

required: true

example: ‘2018-12-09’

description: Author Date of Birth

type: date-only

Date-of-Death:

required: false

example: ‘2018-12-09’

description: Author Date of Beath

type: date-only

Author:

description: This is a new DataType

type: CreateAuthor

properties:

Id:

required: true

example: 1

description: Author Id

type: integer

Age:

required: true

maximum: 200

minimum: 8

example: 10

description: Author Age

type: integer

AuthorHateoas:

description: Author with Hateoas information LINKS

type: Author

properties:

Links:

required: true

description: Property description

type: array

items:

required: true

type: Link

Link:

description: Hateoas LINK

type: object

properties:

href:

required: true

example: /Book/10

description: URL Link

type: string

rel:

required: true

example: GetBook

description: Operation

type: string

method:

required: true

example: GET

description: ‘HTTP Method Get, PUT,..’

type: string

/author:

get:

responses:

‘200’:

body:

application/json:

type: array

items:

type: Author

application/hateaos+json:

type: array

items:

type: AuthorHateoas

‘304’: {}

‘400’: {}

‘500’: {}

headers:

Accept:

example: ‘application/json ‘

description: application/json or application/hateaos+json

type: string

queryParameters:

sort-by:

required: false

example: Example

description: sort by

type: string

filteryby:

required: false

example: Example

description: Property description

type: string

(.. to be continued)